Daily Search Forum Recap: August 20, 2008

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Domain Quality, Length, and Memorability Matter
Daniel Scocco has written a really great blog post at Daily Blog Tips of the importance of domain names--that length and quality do matter. After looking at the Alexa top 250 sites (and the "last 250 sites on the front page of Digg," he concludes that good domain names are vital in the long term success of the site: All other things being equal (e.g., marketing budget, content quality, design, affiliation with larger websites and

Google Enhances "404 Not Found" Experience, Creates Broken Page Experience Instead
The Google Webmaster Central Blog has a post about new widgets that Google has created that allow you to "embed a widget in your 404 page that helps your visitors find what they're looking for by providing suggestions based on the incorrect URL." At Search Engine Land, Barry illustrates how this works: For example, I set up a page at the Search Engine Roundtable at seroundtable.com/advertize.html, notice I spelled advertise, with a "Z." Google automatically

Google AdWords Hides Low Volume Keywords
At Search Engine Watch, member abbotsys notices that the Quality Score for low volume keywords is good -- but if you look closely at the keyword analysis, the ad isn't even running! According to Google, those ads are not showing because nobody is searching for them: Ad Showing - No The keyword phrase you've entered has a low search volume and isn't showing any of your ads. If more users start searching for your keyword,

WebPosition Gold To Release Fix For Ranking Report Issues Soon
I am tracking the large WebmasterWorld thread on the topic of WebPosition Gold no longer working on Google's search pages. It seems like WebPosition Gold is releasing an update today, that will address the issue that is preventing the scraping of the Google results, which stops the tool from building Google ranking reports. WebPosition Gold employee, Scott, said in message number 3726633, yesterday: I have an update going out today which should improve things for

SES San Jose Roundtable Live Coverage Day Two Recap
Here is the concise version of the live blogging coverage our volunteers put together at SES San Jose yesterday: Measuring Success in a 2.0 World Global Search for the B2B SEM Shopping Search Tactics 7 Proven Ways to get Your Website on Page 1 Organically & then Convert 5 Things No One Will Tell You About SEM What's new with Google Analytics and Website Optimizer? Advanced B2B Marketing Search Advertising 101 Identify, Analyze, Act: SEM